Victorian Silver Salts with Cherubs by Hunt & Roskell

• Victorian Period - The Victorian period of furniture and decorative arts design covers the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901. There was not one dominant style of furniture in the Victorian period. Designers used and modified many historical styles such as Gothic, Tudor, Elizabethan, English Rococo, Neoclassical and others, although use of some styles, such as English Rococo and Gothic tended to dominate the furniture manufacture of the period.
  
  The Victorian period was preceded by the Regency and William IV periods, and followed by the Edwardian period, named for Edward VII (1841 ? 1910) who was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India for the brief period from 1901 until his death in 1910.
• Gilding - Gilding is a method of ornamentation whereby a thin sheet of gold metal is applied to items made of wood, leather, ceramics, glass and silver for decorative purposes.
  
  For furniture including mirrors, the sheet of gold is usually applied over a coating of gesso. Gesso is a mixture of plaster of Paris and gypsum mixed with water and then applied to the carved wooden frames of mirrors and picture frames as a base for applying the gold leaf. After numerous coats of gesso have been applied, allowed to dry and then sanded a coat of "bole", a usually red coloured mixture of clay and glue is brushed on and allowed to dry, after which the gold leaf is applied. Over time parts of the gilding will rub off so the base colour can be seen. In water gilding, this was generally a blue colour, while in oil gilding, the under layer was often yellow. In Victorian times, gilders frequently used red as a pigment beneath the gold leaf.
  
  Metal was often gilded by a process known as fire gilding. Gold mixed with mercury was applied and heated, causing the mercury to evaporate, the long-term effect of which was to kill or disable the craftsman or woman from mercury poisoning. The pursuit of beauty has claimed many victims, not the least of which were the artists who made those pieces so highly sought after today.
• Hunt & Roskell - Hunt & Roskell, were a firm of manufacturing and retail jewellers and silversmiths, founded in 1843 by Robert Roskell a famous pocket watch maker from Liverpool, and John Samuel Hunt who had previously been in partnership with silversmith Paul Storr, trading Storr & Co. (1819-22), Storr & Mortimer (1822-38), Mortimer & Hunt (1838-43) and then Hunt & Roskell (1843-97).
  
  Hunt & Roskell had retail premises at 156 New Bond Street and a manufacturing workshops at 26 Harrison Street, near Clerkenwell.
  
  They were among the finest of the Victorian silversmith, manufacturing in the high Victorian style, and their craftsmanship was recognised by their appointment as silversmiths and jewellers to Queen Victoria.
  
  John Samuel Hunt continued as a partner until his death in 1865, when he was succeeded by his son, John Hunt (d.1879). Robert Roskell remained in the firm until his death in 1888. In 1889 the firm was taken over by J.W. Benson and continued in business as Hunt & Roskell Ltd until c.1965.
• Engraving - The method of decorating or creating inscriptions on silver and other metal objects by marking the surface with a sharp instrument such as a diamond point or rotating cutting wheel.
• Gadrooning - A series of lobes usually as a border. In furniture gadrooning is found as carved decoration around the edges of table tops in the Chippendale and Jacobean style furniture. Gadrooning is also found as decoration on the rims of silver and ceramics.

This item has been included into following indexes:

• Hunt & Roskell / Robert Roskell (London) - silver, maker or retailer 22
• Storr, Paul (England) - silver, maker or retailer 78